


EDI's Body

by Nebulad



Series: Sea of Stars [23]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, NB EDI
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 10:11:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7840723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking at herself in the mirror, she looked more like… a prototype, in a way that was thrilling and less frightening than it’d been before. This was the body she would learn in. Over the years it could change with her. Maybe she’d move where her name was. Maybe she’d paint on other names, or numbers, or pictures… maybe one day she would decide to change her shape again. She felt more in control of this body— it was hers and it had never been Cerberus’, and it had never had another name and Kaidan wouldn’t unconsciously scramble out of her way when she walked by him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	EDI's Body

**Author's Note:**

> [Ikny drew EDI's new body](http://ikny-sketches.tumblr.com/post/156305066683/eyy-so-its-been-a-bit-of-a-while-since-ive) and it's literally so cool I recommend putting on a pair of sick sunglasses before you look so they can be blown clean off your fucking face.

EDI couldn’t settle in properly to her mobile unit. It was uncomfortable in a way that the Normandy had never been, and while she first blamed it on the fact that she was not as _connected_ to herself when she was on the field— most of her processing power remained on the Normandy— she eventually had to admit that even when she had full access to herself, she was still uncomfortable unless she retreated into the ship.

“Maybe you’re just not used to… you know, not being ship sized,” Jeff suggested on one of their outings to the Citadel. He was looking over ship modules while EDI shifted uncomfortably— she was making people nervous by fidgeting, but she didn’t care. _She_ had never worked with Saren or the Reapers (although technically she _had_ worked with the geth), and so there was no logical reason for anyone to be afraid of her. AI units and mechs weren’t well-known for their association with Reapers— most people didn’t even know how frequently mercenaries used mechs. It was just that she wasn’t organic and so people avoided her.

“It isn’t that,” she argued, leaning over his shoulder. “You don’t think this body looks _wrong?”_

“What, you don’t like it?” She retreated, frustrated with herself. After her big theatrical move into the unit, getting it up and running and repaired well enough to function, she _knew_ it was futile to regret it. She _liked_ being out on the Citadel, _liked_ making eye contact with people while they spoke, and _liked_ people identifying a physical presence and associating it with her. There was just _something_ about her physical presence that was… intolerable.

The _reaction_ to the mobile unit was the worst part. People would whisper and then _stop_ whenever she came near as if she couldn’t always hear them anyway. Reactions varied— some made fun of her, some indicated sexual attraction to her, some seemed _angry_ at her as if she’d had a choice about the body she inhabited… but in the end, she couldn’t do anything about it. People saw her differently now that they could see her and she couldn’t change their opinion because… the unit simply looked like it looked.

“EDI?” Jeff had abandoned the modules, following her down to the benches where she sat down and crossed her legs. “Do you really not like it because I was just joking—”

“I don’t,” she admitted finally, which seemed like something momentous. “I like _having_ it but it… isn’t how I pictured myself.” She didn’t know _how_ she’d thought she’d look, but like the robot underplating of a high-femme Cerberus infiltration unit… wasn’t it. Doctor Eva had been beautiful and remarkably human, but that was _her_ purpose. This whole unit was something from the people who wanted to see EDI bound to the ship, endlessly powering it and never learning.

“How did you think you’d look?” he asked, sitting down carefully. She balked at the thought of trying to put it into words.

“How did _you_ think I would look if I had a physical form?” she asked instead.

“I don’t know— kind of… the same I guess?” He didn’t know, but was unwilling to step into the minefield. She could appreciate that, right there beside him and not wanting to set something off that she didn’t understand.

“Why didn’t you think I would be quarian?” she asked, trying to work through it herself. “Or male?”

“Well you’ve kinda got the lady voice thing…”

“I have _my_ voice, Jeff. I have never had the option to change it,” she informed him. She probably could if she _really_ wanted to. There was a setting somewhere that handled voice modulation, should Shepard have been entirely put off. They had tested her voice with several groups, all agreeing that her current sound was soothing, confident, and trustworthy. When she’d been on Earth’s moon, she hadn’t had a voice at all.

“Did you… want to change it?” he asked. She shook her head— she no more wanted to change her voice than she’d wanted the Alliance to repaint the Normandy. These were all physical aspects of herself _before_ this unit, something that belonged to _her_ and that she could control. “Look, I don’t know where this came from but if you want me to help do something then I will,” he offered, and she gently placed her head on his shoulder like she’d seen Faust do before.

“I want… to change this mobile unit,” she said finally. “It will be difficult, but I believe with Admiral Tali’Zorah on board we can make an attempt without running the risk of destroying it.” She couldn’t confidently say she would be sad if they _did_ accidentally ruin the body. It was… stressful, she decided. She didn’t know much about feeling things, with only a few months practice and most of that trying to pretend again as if she couldn’t, but the mobile unit was filling her with dread rather than excitement as she’d hoped.

“Can I paint flames on it somewhere?” he asked with a grin, clearly trying to cheer her up. He pressed his hand against her hair. Somehow, she liked the idea.

. . . . .

Jeff wasn’t good at clean-up— indeed his entire contribution after the fact seemed to be just jamming what was left of the paint tins in the sink— but he did paint some very convincing flames on the wide boots that replaced the organic fashion mimic. Tasteful, even, if EDI were any judge.

Tali had been immensely helpful, as had Miranda through some incredibly thorough instructions sent through email. Faust tried to help, although she knew… remarkably little about actual machinery. She mostly grabbed snacks and offered to paint EDI’s name somewhere— _you know, organics don’t really have their names on them. It’d be kind of convenient since you can’t hook up to the geth— they’ll just know you immediately like they do themselves._

She wasn’t sure it worked like that, but what Shepard lacked in engineering skill she made up for in handwriting. It was like a tattoo, sort of— a tattoo that no organic would have, because they had complex social structures in place to introduce themselves to each other. EDI simply had her name across her neck.

They’d made more changes than simple cosmetic additions. Her proportions were more subtle— Doctor Eva had been built to be intimidating and visually appealing to the humans working on Mars, but EDI simply wanted to fit inside herself better. They made her trunk thicker and less uneven, with sturdier arms and legs that were less particularly shaped. They removed her fake hair— she really didn’t need that visual, and whatever armour function it had was easily replicated in a simple skull upgrade. Tali offered to take another look at her facial nerves, but EDI politely declined. She thought perhaps she would like being less readable than the organic species.

Looking at herself in the mirror, she looked more like… a prototype, in a way that was thrilling and less frightening than it’d been before. This was the body she would learn in. Over the years it could change with her. Maybe she’d move where her name was. Maybe she’d paint on other names, or numbers, or pictures… maybe one day she would decide to change her shape again. She felt more in control of this body— it was _hers_ and it had never been Cerberus’, and it had never had another name and Kaidan wouldn’t unconsciously scramble out of her way when she walked by him.

“We got you a present too!” Faust announced as EDI still studied herself in the mirror. She seemed nervous, but EDI supposed it was because she couldn’t tell how the android felt. It was immensely satisfying, to be able to hide that, to only be able to express _her_ emotions on _her_ terms.

“You know there’s a guy that just _makes_ logos to put on stuff?” Jeff asked, holding out a fair sized wrapped box. “The shit you find in the middle of a war.” Carefully, with hands that were less cosmetic in nature and more perfunctorily thin in order to effectively manipulate the Normandy command interface, she unwrapped the package without tearing it.

Looking up at her was an obscenely orange zip-up with an embroidered SR-2 ship with _Team_ overtop and _Normandy_ underneath. It was too big for her— she liked that, the way it hung off of her, because clothes were technically unnecessary and so she could wear what she wanted, too large, too small, fitting fine, or not at all— and the sleeve even said _Artificial Intelligence._ Looking over at Jeff, he’d switched out his hat for one that matched and had _Pilot_ just over his ear.

“We were _going_ to make the sleeve say _ship_ but we figured people would read too much into Joker’s hat,” Tali offered, sitting back against her table and twirling a wrench absently. EDI hugged the jacket close to her, holding her arms around her waist and feeling… _alive._ It wasn’t in the way she’d felt alive at first, with eye contact and people approaching her mobile unit instead of just speaking into the air and Jeff reaching out just to see what her skin felt like.

It was something, maybe, that she wouldn’t have been able to feel if she’d kept trying to experience something organic through Doctor Eva’s infiltration unit. It was different, but she felt like herself— and all the selves she could possibly be, now.

“Thank-you all. This is a… very overwhelming feeling,” she said. She couldn’t pull her mouth into a smile, but she was fairly certain that the effect was achieved anyway. Jeff and Shepard high-fived, and EDI laughed without moving her face.

Later, when they were alone and EDI was sitting comfortably in her pilot seat making sure that none of her processes had been modified by the repair work, Jeff reached out to touch her hand. “Do you miss the old body?” she asked, wondering how she would react if he said _yes._

“Nah. This looks more like I pictured you anyway— besides, a body like that could probably have shoulder cannons or something,” he said, working away with one hand. She did the same.

“Of course. Tali’Zorah handled that when you went to the bathroom.” She didn’t even need to look at him to see his head snap over to her.

“No fucking way.”

“That was a joke,” she said, smiling on the inside.

“Damn. We should write that one down, though, that’d be _so_ cool.” EDI inclined her head, shrugging her shoulders like she’d seen Shepard do. She didn’t know why she was so inclined to follow the Commander’s influence— maybe because she was what EDI had wanted to be, before. A mix of organic and synthetic, a true balance struck between humanity and machine. She didn’t need that anymore, but the gesture seemed appropriate.

“I would have to take off the sweater.”

**Author's Note:**

> [My writing blog is here](http://nebulaad.tumblr.com) and all right so. I'm not hating on EDI's original body type because I don't hate it in the sense that it doesn't look nice, but I hate it in the sense that there's a blurb next to her concept art about how what they immediately thought when designing a body for EDI was "she has to be sexy". That, to the exclusion of all else, was the goal with EDI's body and it's fucking obnoxious y'know? She's just _stuck_ with this body that all right. It's _someone else's body_. Like Doctor Eva is an AI and she's only there for one mission and then never spoken of again, but it was still _not EDI's body_ and as an AI I feel like EDI would have infinitely more sympathy for the shackled Doctor Eva than anyone else could. It's like living in the corpse of a person y'know it's fucking weird and EDI never gets the opportunity to change it she's just blindly pleased with this sexy body she has and now suddenly she's being gendered all over the place (she can't do a THING with her hair, Joker wants her to "live it up like a girly girl") which we never got with AI EDI because I guess having a femme body means you get to 1) definitely be a woman and 2) get to be talked down to like a woman. And after the week my nonbinary ass just had (would a man have walked into the grocery store and literally talked another man through how to make change? literally telling me bill by bill and coin by coin how to make his stupid ass 9.05 in change??) I just suddenly felt a pang of sympathy for EDI who now, since she has a body, has a gender.
> 
> Anyway I'm not good at writing for Joker and not sure how _much_ I like this because I haven't been able to read it over properly because my house is an animal farm atm and I'm distracted at every goddamn turn. But I really wanted EDI to have a legacy outfit that wasn't a catsuit with the same meticulously shaped vagina that Banshees have (how did I play all the way through Mass Effect?) so I have her a big ass fucking sweater.


End file.
